New York State Police issue alert warning of sextortion scams
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — New York State Police issued an alert Thursday warning the public of a nationwide sextortion scam that arrives to people as an email with a picture of their home in it, threatening to release embarrassing information about them unless they pay up.
“It’s crazy, it really is, there’s so much of it out there, they’re always changing their tactics,” said Lieutenant Jeremy Lehning of the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, referring to the ever-evolving landscape of cyber crime and scams.
This time, police want the public to be on the lookout for a scam called sextortion.
“They are purporting to be someone else,” Lehning said. “What they want to do is they want to suspend your disbelief, they want to make sure that you believe everything that they’re saying and they want you to make a very irrational, very quick decision most of the time with your finances.”
The sextortion scam will claim through email that software has been installed on one’s phone or computer and that their internet activity has been tracked, claiming the person visited pornography sites and that they have video of them doing so.
The scam threatens to release this information unless payment is made in bitcoin to make all of it go away. In these emails, scammers may also attach a picture of the person’s home.
“They do all their homework on you,” Lehning said. “They look into your background, they find out where you live, they find pictures of your home, they know who you are, they know who your family members are.”
What to do if it happens to you
The ECSO said scammers put out a mass blast and they’re looking to see who takes the bait.
The ECSO’s Investigative Services Division works on cyber and fraud crimes. If you receive one of these emails, you’re encouraged to not respond to it. Instead, block the sender, delete the email and report the scam through IC3.gov, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Police said it is very hard to investigate these crimes because oftentimes, scrambled phone numbers and IP addresses are used. It also takes a lot of time to issue subpoenas to financial institutions.
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